Ive played a few Vintage tournaments in paper magic. I topped 8 the February Top deck games tournament, and played in an NYSE qualifier and some mock tournaments with some testing partners. Im starting to see a trend revive.
There are a lot of people playing R/U delver and mentor, and many of them are forgoing their dredge hate in their maindecks to load up on other unfavorable match-ups, specifically Oath and Shops. I was playing a mock tournament on Thursday and was playing against 5 delver decks, one mentor list, and two shop decks. When I saw my delver opponent bring in 13 cards for shops, i felt it was 2005 all over again. I went 1/1 against delver for the day, and all games went to 3 matches: the matchup should be a bye.
Its been common for players to do this. The reasoning is that in a typical 24+ person tournament, you can take a loss a and still top 8. I can understand doing this for smaller tournaments, like your local vintage FNM or weekly tournaments, but at larger ones, youre just asking for variance to kick you in the ass. Youre also not honing your skills to be able to perform better with fewer slots when it really counts: those more presigious tournaments, where the prize payout is a lot better.
As a shop pilot, ive learned to play through some miserable match-ups (dredge and sometimes oath) by not skimping and learning that the utility of your cards changes over the couple of turns or pre or post sideboard.
What are your thoughts on the subject?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blue: teaching Magic players manners since 1995
Shops: Teaching blue players manners since 2009
Hold on a moment. Your issue is that Delver players are giving up the Dredge matchup and thereby "asking variance to kick [them] in the ass", and they're doing this to shore up the Shops matchup which you opine "should be a bye" for the Shops player. So why isn't variance an issue when they're throwing away the Shops matchup? Honestly it sounds like you're just annoyed that people are sideboarding against your strategy rather than the other popular hate target. And what's to say this isn't a legitimate metagame call to deal with a high expected showing of Shops? It seems a bit sour grapes to tell Delver players they're doing it wrong just because they tuned their decks so that they wouldn't auto-lose to you, to be honest.
I dont mind the in-house and local matchups. Im not sour here. Im starting to get concerned that the delver players on our team are going to miss out on placing well at larger tournaments due to forgoing these slots. Delver players have has moderate success using dack faden and an extra grudge or two in the main. My concern is that dredge is at its best when its numbers are at its lowest, and all it takes is that deck to get hot a few rounds until it knocks the unprepared out of contention. We have an NYSE tournament and Vintage champs was moved up this year.
If people are skimping on dredge hate, then this is EXACTLY the time to play it. I want to see them do well, especially if were going to drive 100+ miles to get there. I was there at the TMD when dredge took down the tournament, and it was exactly because people thought they wouldnt see it.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blue: teaching Magic players manners since 1995
Shops: Teaching blue players manners since 2009
Well I apologise for casting aspersions on your motives but my question still stands: Why is skimping on Shops hate better than skimping on Dredge hate? If the Delver matchup is practically a bye for the Shops player, that's something that Delver players should look at when building their sideboards. I guess what I'm saying is that you're arguing against being unprepared for a particular matchup and are using as evidence for this the fact that they weren't unprepared for a different matchup. The bit about 13 sideboard slots, ok, that's excessive, but not as much as it might seem. Shops is, as you say, one of the worst matchups for Delver and they need a large portion of their sideboards devoted to it. Dredge isn't a wonderful matchup either, of course, but like anything it's a balancing act. You at least seem to think that if these decks were prepared to face Dredge then they wouldn't have been able to challenge Shops the way they did, so I don't really see how choosing to prepare for one bad matchup over the other is such a terrible metagaming decision.
I do t think that people should skip on hate for large tournaments, as the playoff rounds extend to the top 16, where you are bound to face almost anything. The issue is this: if you are dedicating 13 cards to sideboard against one archetype, there isn't much sideboard for anything else, and your ability to bring in "splash hate" diminishes with the lack of slots to play more focused answers, which is bad for testing under real tournament conditions. Delver is usually a bye for shops when it's mana base is spread to three colors. Playing two colors gives it a stronger mana base against shops but makes the deck more vulnerable to blue. Delver needs to compensate by bringing in 13 cards for shop hate, but does so at the expense of being able to bring in cards against mentor lists, graveyard based decks like dredge and minus six, other gush decks, and even outliers like bug fish, bomberman, and hate bears, all of which fare between match ups if you have more focused answers, which can't happen if the space isn't there.
Even with all that hate, it still went to three games, so I guess the big question is whether it was worth it. I can understand doing this for a vintage FNM or a 18 person tournament, but with NYSE and Vintage Wourllds around the corner, I don't feel skimping on testing what your Sideboard will look like and learning how to squeeze more advantage out of fewer cards in that sideboard is going to help Take these tourneys down. That's all.
I also wanted to know if this was a common practice, as I'm testing with a new group.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blue: teaching Magic players manners since 1995
Shops: Teaching blue players manners since 2009
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
There are a lot of people playing R/U delver and mentor, and many of them are forgoing their dredge hate in their maindecks to load up on other unfavorable match-ups, specifically Oath and Shops. I was playing a mock tournament on Thursday and was playing against 5 delver decks, one mentor list, and two shop decks. When I saw my delver opponent bring in 13 cards for shops, i felt it was 2005 all over again. I went 1/1 against delver for the day, and all games went to 3 matches: the matchup should be a bye.
Its been common for players to do this. The reasoning is that in a typical 24+ person tournament, you can take a loss a and still top 8. I can understand doing this for smaller tournaments, like your local vintage FNM or weekly tournaments, but at larger ones, youre just asking for variance to kick you in the ass. Youre also not honing your skills to be able to perform better with fewer slots when it really counts: those more presigious tournaments, where the prize payout is a lot better.
As a shop pilot, ive learned to play through some miserable match-ups (dredge and sometimes oath) by not skimping and learning that the utility of your cards changes over the couple of turns or pre or post sideboard.
What are your thoughts on the subject?
Blue: teaching Magic players manners since 1995Shops: Teaching blue players manners since 2009
If people are skimping on dredge hate, then this is EXACTLY the time to play it. I want to see them do well, especially if were going to drive 100+ miles to get there. I was there at the TMD when dredge took down the tournament, and it was exactly because people thought they wouldnt see it.
Blue: teaching Magic players manners since 1995Shops: Teaching blue players manners since 2009
Even with all that hate, it still went to three games, so I guess the big question is whether it was worth it. I can understand doing this for a vintage FNM or a 18 person tournament, but with NYSE and Vintage Wourllds around the corner, I don't feel skimping on testing what your Sideboard will look like and learning how to squeeze more advantage out of fewer cards in that sideboard is going to help Take these tourneys down. That's all.
I also wanted to know if this was a common practice, as I'm testing with a new group.
Blue: teaching Magic players manners since 1995Shops: Teaching blue players manners since 2009